REWARDS. A person loses his pocket-book containing fifty pounds, and offers ten pounds to the finder if he will restore it. The finder ought not to demand the reward. It implies surely some imputation upon a man's integrity, when he accepts payment for being honest. For, for what else is he paid? If he retains the property he is manifestly fraudulent. To be paid for giving it up, is to be paid for not committing fraud. The loser offers the reward in order to over-power the temptation to dishonesty. To accept the reward is therefore tacitly to acknowledge that you would have been dishonest if it had not been offered. This certainly is not maintaining an integrity that is "above suspicion." It will be said that the reward is offered voluntarily. This, in proper language, is not true. Two evils are presented to the loser, of which he is compelled to choose one. If men were honest, he would not offer the reward: he would make it known that he had lost his pocket-book, and the finder, if a finder there were, would restore it. The offered ten pounds is a tax which is imposed upon him by the want of uprightness in mankind, and he who demands the money actively promotes the imposition. The very word reward carries with it its own reprobation. As a reward, the man of integrity would receive nothing. If the loser requested it, he might if he needed it, accept a donation; but he would let it be understood, that he accepted a present not that he received a debt.

Perhaps examples enough or more than enough, have been accumulated to illustrate this class of obligations. Many appeared needful, because it is a class which is deplorably neglected in practice. So strong is the temptation to think that we may rightfully possess whatever the law assigns to us-so insinuating is the notion, upon subjects of property, that whatever the

law does not punish we may rightfully do, that there is little danger of supplying too many motives to habitual discrimination of our duties and to habitual purity of conduct. Let the reader especially remember, that the examples which are offered are not all of them selected on account of their individual importance, but rather as illustrations of the general principle. A man may meet with a hundred circumstances in life to which none of these examples are relevant, but I think he will not have much difficulty in estimating the principles which they illustrate. And this induces the observation, that although several of these examples are taken from British law or British customs, they do not, on that account, lose their applicability where these laws and customs do not obtain. If this book should ever be read in a foreign land, or if it should be read in this land when public institutions or the tenor of men's conduct shall be changed, the principles of its morality will, nevertheless, be applicable to the affairs of life.

CHAPTER III.

INEQUALITY OF PROPERTY.

Accumulation of wealth: its proper limits-Provision for children: Keeping up the family."

THAT many and great evils result from that inequality of property which exists in civilized countries, is indicated by the many propositions which have been made to diminish or destroy it. We want not indeed such evidence; for it is sufficiently manifest to every man who will look round upon his neighbors. We join not with those who declaim against all inequality of property the real evil is not that it is unequal, but

that it is greatly unequal; not that one man is richer than another, but that one man is so rich as to be luxurious, or imperious, or profligate, and that another is so poor as to be abject and depraved, as well as to be destitute of the proper comforts of life.

There are two means by which this pernicious inequality of property may be diminished; by political institutions, and by the exertions of private men. Our present business is with the latter.

To a person who possesses and expends more than he needs, there are two reasonable inducements to diminish its amount-first, to benefit others, and next to benefit his family and himself. The claims of benevolence towards others are often and earnestly urged upon the public, and for that reason they will not be repeated here. Not that there is no occasion to repeat the lessson, for it is very inadequately learnt; but that it is of more consequence to exhibit obligations which are less frequently enforced. To insist upon diminishing the amount of a man's property for the sake of his family and himself, may present to some men new ideas, and to some men the doctrine may be paradoxical.

Large possessions are in a great majority of instances injurious to the possessor-that is to say, those who hold them are generally less excellent, both as citizens and as men, than those who do not. The truth appears to be established by the concurrent judgment of mankind. Lord Bacon says-" Certainly great riches have sold more men than they have bought out. As baggage is to an army, so are riches to virtue.-It hindereth the march, yea and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory."—" It is to be feared that the general tendency of rank, and especially of riches, is to withdraw the heart from spiritual exer

cises.''*

"A much looser system of morals commonly

prevails in the higher than in the middling and lower

orders of society."

virtue and abilities."‡

"The middle rank contains most

"Wealth heap'd on wealth, nor truth nor safety buys,

The dangers gather as the treasures rise."?

It was an observation of Voltaire's that the English people were, like their butts of beer, froth at top, dregs at bottom-in the middle excellent. The most rational, the wisest, the best portion of mankind, belong to that class who possess neither poverty nor riches."

Let the reader look around him. Let him observe who are the persons that contribute most to the moral and physical amelioration of mankind; who they are that practically and personally support our unnumbered institutions of benevolence; who they are that exhibit the worthiest examples of intellectual exertion; who they are to whom he would himself apply if he needed to avail himself of a manly and discriminating judgment. That they are the poor is not to be expected : we appeal to himself whether they are the rich. Who then would make his son a rich man? Who would remove his child out of that station in society which is thus peculiarly favorable to intellectual and moral excellence?

If a man knows that wealth will in all probability be injurious to himself and to his children, injurious too in the most important points, the religious and moral character, it is manifestly a point of the soundest wisdom and the truest kindness to decline to accumulate it. Upon this subject, it is admirable to observe with what exactness the precepts of Christianity are adapted

* More's Moral Sketches, 3d Edit. p. 446.
† Wilberforce: Pract. View.

Wollestoncroft: Rights of Women, c. 4.
Johnson Vanity of Human Wishes.

to that conduct which the experience of life recommends. "The care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word :"- "choked with cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection;""How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" "They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition." Not that riches necessarily lead to these consequences, but that such is their tendency; a tendency so uniform and powerful that it is to be feared these are their very frequent results. Now this language of the Christian scriptures does not contain merely statements of fact-it imposes duties; and whatever may be the precise mode of regarding those duties, one point is perfectly clear;—that he who sets no other limit to his possessions or accumulations than inability or indisposition to obtain more, does not conform to the will of God. Assuredly, if any speci

fied thing is declared by Christianity to be highly likely to obstruct our advancement in goodness, and to endanger our final felicity, against that thing, whatever it be, it is imperative upon us to guard with wakeful solicitude.

And therefore, without affirming that no circumstance can justify a great accumulation of property, it may safely be concluded that far the greater number of those who do accumulate it, do wrong: nor do I see any reason to be deterred from ranking the distribution of a portion of great wealth, or refusal to accumulate it, amongst the imperative duties which are imposed by the moral law. In truth, a man may almost discover whether such conduct is obligatory, by referring to the motives which induce him to acquire great property or to retain it. The motives are generally impure; the desire of splendor, or the ambition of eminence, or